This invention relates to housing construction and more particularly to a system for generating a quote for housing components, namely cabinets.
Generally, when a housing development is under construction a cabinet supplier for the development provides the builder with a quote for cabinets for the houses in the development. The cabinet supplier has numerous product lines with different wood species (or styles), each with different prices. The builder selects a subset of the supplier's product lines of cabinets and the supplier provides a quote to the builder for the cabinets in that subset. This subset of cabinets is made available at different prices for selection by purchasers of the houses in the development. However, the subset of cabinets still presents numerous styles at numerous different prices. In order to simplify the selection process for the purchasers, these cabinets are usually subgrouped into “buckets,” so that all cabinets in the same bucket have the same price. Therefore, the decision for the purchaser can be simplified into “standard, upgraded or premium” price levels (for example), with several cabinets available at each price level.
The housing development typically includes several floor plans, each with different requirements for cabinets. Each floor plan may further include optional layouts, such as an expanded kitchen or master bath, which would have different requirements for cabinets.
The cabinet supplier provides a quote to the builder for each optional layout of each floor plan in each style of available cabinet. In that way, the builder could provide the range of options to the purchasers and the prices for each option. When the purchaser selects a floor plan, any optional layouts and cabinet style, the builder would communicate these selections to the cabinet supplier to place the order.
The quotes often include products and/or services that are outsourced. The price for these products or services often varies by wood species, causing a user to have to enter an appropriate price for each style. Maintenance for these outsourced items has to be done individually at each occurrence in the quote. The current quoting system allows only one price per outsourced item. A user must therefore manually manipulate the quote output to reflect the price by style. In addition, the pricing is not stored and to maintain, must be recreated.